Oldies But Goodies
{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review
Subseries 3: The Tawny Man Trilogy (The Realm of the
Elderlings)
by Robin Hobb
by Karen S. Wiesner
Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. Also, reading my previous appraisals will foster understanding about certain facts about this umbrella series that are required to make sense of things included in this particular review.
In an attempt to spend less money on books that half the time I don't even enjoy, early in 2025, I figured out how to check out ebooks from the app my local library uses for this purpose. Utilizing Libby, I can check out ebooks and audiobooks. Unfortunately, the selection of material is limited. A lot of the books I like to read aren't available on it, but I was glad to see that most of Robin Hobb's titles are available. It's just a lot of waiting when I "place a hold" and patiently endure the, at times lengthy, delay in it becoming available for me to read.
Robin Hobb is the author of The Realm of the Elderlings. Within this umbrella series, she's written five "miniseries" and numerous short stories. In previous Alien Romances Blog reviews, I covered The Inheritance & Other Stories, which contains a couple Realm of the Elderlings offerings. I also reviewed the first two trilogies within this series, The Farseer and The LiveShip Traders trilogies, along with two miscellaneous novellas in the series, "The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince" and "Words Like Coins".
The Farseer Trilogy was focused on Fitz, the illegitimate son of Prince Chivalry of the royal line presiding over the Six Duchies. In that first subset, we learned something of the Elderlings (including dragons) and their ancient cities and settlements around the world, especially in the Rain Wilds. In the second subseries, The Liveship Traders Trilogy, we moved away from the royal Farseer lineage and problems within the nobility to focus on "liveships", which are the outer cocoons of sea serpents that were in the process of transforming into a dragon. These logs were buried in the destroyed city of the Elderlings in the Rain Wilds and found by traders who excavated the ruins for valuable, magical artifacts.
The Tawny Man Trilogy includes the following novels:
Fool's Errand, Book 1 (2001)
The Golden Fool, Book 2 (2002)
Fool's Fate, Book 3 (2003)
Once again, we return to Fitz from the first Elderlings subseries, The Farseer Trilogy. He's now in his mid-thirties. It's been fifteen years since the events of Farseer. The events of all previous stories that I mentioned above reviewing before play into each of these stories in a wonderfully cohesive and illuminating way that I really enjoyed. I felt like I was pulling threads from different tapestries until they began to fit into one. The author is to be lauded in how she meshed her subseries seamlessly, at least for the most part.
As a preface to this review, in this series there are two "magical" talents: With the Skill, a person can reach out to another's mind, no matter how far away, and read thoughts and influence thinking and behavior. An even older magic is the Wit, in which humans feel such a kinship with animals, they share thoughts and behaviors, sometimes becoming so bonded that they themselves become little more than beasts. The strength of the bond can also lead to performing powerful attacks. The Wit is looked upon with scorn and fear by most humans.
In the first book of the trilogy, Fool's Errand, Fitz is living a quiet life in the middle of nowhere with his wolf Nighteyes, to whom he's Wit-bonded, and a foundling son he's adopted as his own named Hap.
In The Tawny Man, few know Fitz as anyone but Tom Badgerlock. Most believe FitzChivalry of the royal line to be dead. The man who taught Fitz as an assassin, Chade, visits Tom. In previous stories, Fitz conceived with the queen as King Verity used his body for the purpose of providing an heir to the throne. Their son has shown signs of being both Witted and possessing the Skill. Prince Dutiful is untutored and there are few if any teachers of both abilities in the current climate. At Chade's request that Tom teach Dutiful, Tom protests that his knowledge of both of these powers is incomplete and erratic. Chade also tells Tom of the unrest among the Witted in the land. The rebels call themselves the Piebalds. (The story of Piebald origins is told in "The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince", a favorite of mine in this series.)
Chade leaves after Tom refuses to train the prince, and later the Fool (who has remade himself in many ways, shapes and forms in his appearances in the series, becoming known in this trilogy as The Tawny Man, Lord Golden) visits him. In previous trilogies within the series, the question of the Fool's identity was revealed to be ever-changing. The Fool worked as an actual "fool" at court in Buckkeep for the king in the first subseries. In the second, he was a she, the carver Amber in Bingtown. I'd wondered in my review of the previous subseries The Liveship Traders Trilogy how/when this anomaly was revealed. Now I know it's in The Tawny Man Trilogy that the facts behind this situation come to life. The Fool is much more than any have previously suspected--a being called a White Prophet whose purpose is to set the world on a better path. As such, this creature invents and reinvents itself in order to serve its impetus. The Catalyst is the one who makes the changes, and that one is Fitz. The Fool reveals in this book that he doesn't believe he's fulfilled his destiny correctly--during the time he was Amber, he went awry and therefore warped all that came afterward.
In Fool's Errand, Prince Dutiful is believed to have been kidnapped by Piebalds. In truth, Dutiful has been enslaved by a Witted Woman who died and forced her essence into an unwilling cat. Lord Golden and Tom, appearing as his servant, must rescue Prince Dutiful--possibly from himself.
In The Golden Fool, Book 2, Tom intends to return to court and train Prince Dutiful with the intention of forming a coterie of Skill users. The group will include Dutiful, Lord Golden and Chade, along with the disabled servant of Chade's named Thick. Fitz's daughter with Molly, Nettle, also possesses the Skill, and she reaches out to Tom against the will of the person she believes to be her father--Burrich (from the first trilogy), who's now married to Fitz's love Molly and they have a Skilled son together named Swift. Additionally, a Witted coterie is in the works as the scourge against this magic is being actively turned over. The kingdom wants to show that Wit is a talent instead of a distrusted curse to fear.
In this story, the Fool reveals his deepest feelings to Tom, believing him to be his beloved. But Tom can't accept this, and a schism forms between them. There's also a thread about the princess of the Out Islands potentially marrying Prince Dutiful to establish an alliance between their people, thus reunited the Six Duchies. However, she requires that, to win her hand, he must bring her the head of the dragon IceFyre, who's trapped beneath the ice on the isle of Aslevjal. The Golden Fool has foretold that he'll die there trying to stop this fate from happening.
The trilogy concludes with Fool's Fate. Tom makes an effort to steal away by ship with the coteries to go to the Out Islands and give the princess what she needs to accept Dutiful's troth. Tom wants to prevent the Fool's death at all cost, but fate isn't so easily thwarted. The Fool joins them despite their scheming, and together the Witted and Skilled coteries attempt to free IceFyre from its prison. However, another White Prophet would see the dragon killed in order to prevent the Fool's prophecy that dragons would return to the world from being fulfilled. Though the Fool is destined to die during all these events, Tom refuses to allow it and intends to do everything in his power to save them both.
While I enjoyed it, I concluded this subseries feeling a bit unsure what the purpose of it was. More than anything else, The Tawny Man Trilogy seems to be little more than an extremely long bridge (very close to 5000 pages!)--from the previous subseries to the next. You get to see events that happened before play out in the present here and, yes, familiar characters move along toward future events. Mind you, this isn't so much as a complaint as a comment that left me a bit baffled. Tom is a complex character, and I didn't always understand him. Also, in a tiny way, the whole plotline about the Fool's androgynous nature as a prophet that's reinvented itself over the course of perhaps centuries struck me as a little far-fetched and convenient to the plot in this subseries. Finally, apparently unlike, say, the council of wizards in The Lord of the Rings, White Prophets in this series don't work together and in fact can actively work against each other to see their own ends fulfilled. Who or what's guiding all that is anybody's guess. I'm not sure how or even if that'll play out further in the next subseries.
As an aside, the ebook version of Fool's Errand was over 1,300 pages. It took me 7 hours and 19 minutes to read it. I was surprised I enjoyed reading an ebook, though it was annoying to drag my iPad around everywhere so I could snatch a few minutes here and there to read. It's also frustrating because I have crappy internet and sometimes I couldn't get the app to load the book so I could read when I wanted to. You never have that problem with a paperback. But I also didn't spend $30-$75 on purchasing the three books either used or new. There are trade-offs when reading traditionally or electronically, I'm learning.
In any case, I enjoyed this trilogy, though it was a good 3000 pages too long for me. I was eager to see the evolution of the characters as well as the world The Realm of the Elderlings is set expanded. For whatever reason, I didn't feel quite as exhausted reading this third subseries as I did those that came before. I believe the ebook medium had a lot to do with that. But I also didn't enjoy this subseries in the Realm of the Elderlings as much as the last one I read. While I do want to get started on the fourth subseries, The Rain Wilds Chronicles, which has four books instead of just three, and is set in the city of the ancient Elderlings, I do need another break before I turn to those paperbacks I own. I suspect that final subseries will at last include everything I've been looking forward to so eagerly since I found this amazing series.
Karen Wiesner is an award-winning,
multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.
Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog
Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/
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